NYC05FA001 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP) to Fulton County Airport (NY0)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05FA001
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N2771J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Islip, NYTo Fulton County Airport (NY0), Johnstown, NY
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departing on a round-trip flight, the non-instrument rated pilot telephoned a flight service station and received a standard weather briefing. The briefing included information about marginal VFR conditions for the proposed return trip; including increased cloud cover and scattered showers. VFR flight was not recommended for the return trip. After completing the first leg of the trip, the pilot again telephoned the flight service station. The second briefing included information about a slow moving cool front with poorer weather conditions north and west of the planned route, with the possibility of a shower or two along the route. At the time, one of the airports near the route was reporting marginal VFR conditions. The return flight was conducted at night, and proceeded uneventfully for approximately two-thirds of the planned flight. The pilot was receiving flight following, and asked the controller how high the clouds were, so that he could get out of them. The airplane then descended rapidly in a left turn and struck trees.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which led to VFR flight into IMC and his loss of aircraft control. Factors were night and cloud conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05FA001
- Event ID
- 20041015X01632
- Case number
- NYC05FA001
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7f6745c5111f4a1258596be1d2cb8bd1053cf81919483d31923d56c0fe04f1df; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:19:13.832Z.